This paper is a call to SIGAda members to make a determined thrust to broaden Ada usage in the commercial world. More specifically, we wish to exploit an opportunity in the Electronic Design Automation industry (EDA) to use (a kernel of) Ada as a hardware description language (HDL) for the design and programming of today's System On a Chip (SOC). The Ada subset referred to in this paper is intended for the EDA domain to solve practical problems as an HDL, and, in addition, as the interfacing programming language used for testing and simulations (a market currently dominated by C/C++).
Simplicity can be a significant aid in penetrating the market of users and makers of EDA tools. This community consists mostly of electrical engineers and tool manufacturers who would have both a cultural orientation and a commercial interest in a simple kernel of Ada.We use examples to illustrate the appropriateness of Kernel Ada for the development and testing of reusable hardware components.
There is a need for a single, simple language suitable both for teaching the important fundamentals of programming and for practical applications long after graduation.
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